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Topic: When to add honey super (Read 2253 times)

I'm a new beek here in FL, and I'm not sure when it's right to add another super. We use one deep box and from the beginning of June to the beginning of July I added 3 supers. In late July (a month ago) I was able to pull 9 honey frames but they were from 2 different boxes. I put both boxes back on, leaving three still. Since then we have had a lot of afternoon rains, and a lot of humidity. Yesterday I inspected and the brood box was boiling up with bees and packed with brood and all three supers had a lot of uncapped honey but only a couple frames in each box were fully capped. Because of the crowding in the brood box and my previous experience with swarming due to crowding I decided to add 2 empty frames in the brood box and added a 4th super. But now I'm not sure that adding a super was right. Will this just delay them capping off the honey in the other 3 or is it possible they are not capping it due to the humidity? With all the capped brood I saw, the population is likely to continue to increase and I wanted to make sure they had room to work. Thanks for any advice you can give.

it's all going to depend on nectar flows. Here in my area, I'm not adding supers because there won't be any more nectar flows strong enough for the bees to draw new wax on for the rest of the year. I'm letting the bees just pack in what they get for the rest of the year as winter stores. If I was expecting any stronger flows in the next couple months then I might add a super. You are the one who is going to have to answer the question of adding super or not by what the flows appear to bee for you in your location. The bees will not draw new wax if there is no nectar flows, especially this late in the year.

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Sitting in the shade, drinking lemon aid.Enjoying the breeze while counting the bees.

If you have Brazilian Pepper in your area it's due to start blooming very shortly. As MB said, allow for expansion! Might want to add a medium or deep as a second brood chamber and then watch for the need for more supers.